Rollins Pond within the Anthropocene

Whenever tasked with writing about a place important to me, my mind always reverts back to a small campground in the northern Adirondacks called Rollins Pond. My family and our friends have been traveling to Rollins Pond every summer since before I can remember. It is a place that is distinct from home, but a place that is so comforting to return to that I am positive that a part of me remains behind at Rollins Pond even when I depart from it.  There are many things that make Rollins Pond special, but the thing that I think continually traps me into writing about it all the time is its singular quality of being the most “natural” place that I have been in frequent contact with. Rollins Pond is located twenty miles away from Saranac Lake and far from any big towns or busy highways. Driving into the campground, there is minimal cell phone service, no motor boats allowed on the water, and no houses built up around the lake, leaving it isolated from most modern amenities besides the electricity and running water in the bathrooms scattered about every couple miles or so and the ice cream truck that drives through the campsite around dinnertime. It is a place full of such simple beauty that made me fall in love with it when I was younger and continues to still cast its spell on me. From the misty mornings where one can listen to loons call to each other across the water, to the whimsical creeks that twist and turn through the trees, there is a strange, yet simple allure to this place.

When I was younger coming to Rollins Pond, I was always most excited to go off with my friends to all our favorite designated places – Fishing Rock, Swimming Rock, Slippery Rock, Skull Island, Blueberry Island – to spend our days fishing, jumping into the water off rocks, picking wild blueberries and exploring together. Being without a television and other distractions forced creativity beyond which I think I will ever experience again, resulting in numerous skits and songs performed and other bizarre games created — some of which I remember involved fishing for squirrels or balancing on logs trying to push people off. Nature became a place for the imagination to run wild and a place to put aside time to mess around and laugh with people, something often difficult to make time for with the interference of modern life.

One of my most vivid memories I have of Rollins Pond was when I was around ten years old and there was a meteor shower. It was late at night and we went out on the canoes to view a crystal clear, vibrant sky that was filled with distinct sparkling stars and a mystical Milky Way. We held on to each others paddles so our canoes could connect to each other and laid back and watched in amazement as the galaxy entertained us. I still remember that first shooting star I saw that night and the awestruck feeling I got along with it. Still to this day, I have not seen anything like it. We gazed up at the sky for an hour or so trying to count how many shooting stars we saw, with the number totaling over two hundred. I remember going to bed that night brimming with happiness and not being entirely sure why I felt so content. It was a night firmly implanted in my memory because I was amazed at what the Earth was capable of doing and also because I got to share in this memorable experience with so many people I adored, which I think has the capability to bind people together in some sort of way.

As I continue to return to this place, my appreciation is still intact, but it definitely differs. I am still aware of the uniqueness of this place on Earth and aware of its magic, yet I am also more in tune to the tiny details that give this place its intrigue. It’s the smell of pine trees mixed with fires burning. The sound of a canoe slowly breaking the smooth water. The purple/blue/pink sky that hangs over the trees at dusk. The sharp peal of laughter that breaks out amidst a silent night. The morning fog over the water and the mysterious calls of loons that soon disappear beneath the water. The magic of this place exists, yet it exists in the simple and concrete, rather than the complex and abstract.

I think the most reassuring aspect of this place stems from its seeming ability to resist change, which is comforting in a world that changes at dizzying speeds. Growing up while being able to return to a place that is unchanging is a very self-reflective and unearthing experience that forces one to profoundly recognize and analyze changes that have occurred among themselves and their relationships with the people that they love. It was not necessarily something I analyzed when there, but now that I am thinking about this idea, I am aware of how this place accentuated the differences in our lives. As us kids got older, the raucous play mellowed into casual conversation and we began to realize the difficulty of very different people forced into being friends by our parents. When we got even older, the group fell apart and we found ourselves continuing to show up to Rollins Pond but at different times and with new faces to replace the old. It was sad, but also, I suppose, a necessary stepping point of growing up and moving on. Yet as the differences among the people emerged, the place remained the same and the vast geological time scale now serves to remind us of the comparatively rapid and finite human time scale.

This past summer, I returned to Rollins Pond with my mother and brother after being away for two summers. It was strange to be away for this amount of time, and my brother and I both felt the subtle differences. Across the lake, we noticed two docks and two small cabins built alongside them and in the morning we would hear small motor boats disrupting the morning silence and loud music drifting through the air at night time. It was a small, relatively insignificant change, but it stressed me out imagining a future with built up houses alongside the trees and motor boats criss-crossing the lake, all filled with people trying to maximize their time in an eroding “nature”. Things change, but it frightens me to think that things that were so reliable and grounding must be put under the pressure of humanity and submit to society’s rapid changes.

When I look back at what I have written just now, I realize the complexity of discussing this place in and of itself without also discussing the people whom I have experienced this place with. It puts an almost oxymoronic twist on discussing this place within the context of Anthropocene, because it is inevitable that this place would not be as special to me without the interaction between myself, my human companions and the Earth. The Anthropocene is a difficult concept because it seems to assume that humans are not a part of “nature”, but within Rollins Pond, it seems to me, the two have always been able to seamlessly bind together to create something in which humans and nature are able to recognize beauty and meaning by interaction with the other.

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